phpBay Pro Tips

phpBay to support Amazon

As many of you have heard (or perhaps found out the hard way) eBay has been shutting down the accounts of many publishers. Not just shady people either. It’s one of the most ridiculous thing’s i have ever seen. I have not been shut down, but since they are not giving much info as to WHY they are shutting people down, i have no idea if and when it will happen.

Here is a great thread on EPN. My eBay name is scuttleSRVbuttin. I have a few comments on there.

Many people have been screwed. If you’re one of them, there may be a light at the end of the tunnel. I just talked to Wade(the phpBay developer) the other day and suggested that he start working on Amazon integration for phpBay. He told me he had actually started it the night before.

I don’t think the Amazon affiliate program is nearly as good as eBay, but there are people who do well with it. This is a great opportunity for people who already have sites with traffic. If you already use phpBay, then your set. But if you have BANS or a custom thing, you may want to switch to phpBay or get the API.

Anyone here been banned by eBay yet? Have you tried switching to pepperjam? did it work?

How EBay’s decision to shift to fixed prices affects affiliates

I read an interesting article in the Chicago Tribune today that said EBay will be switching its fee structure to promote fixed prices over bidding. According to another article in the Chicago Tribune, EBay’s number of new users is slightly going down. EBay says the move is to help them compete with Amazon.

So is this change going to help phpBay Pro affiliates?

Well, according to EBay this change will encourage sellers to sell more items, which will mean more products for buyers to choose from and more sales, right?

Not so fast. In my experience “biddable” items get more clicks than buy it now because buyers to your site see the lower price and are intrigued to click. This will help you get more cookies on people’s computers.

On the other hand, how likely are those people to actually buy the item once they realize that wasn’t the selling price, but just the current bid.

I think with EBay’s upcoming changes to the ACRU payout system, the new fee changes will be positive for affiliates. Why? Because if someone sees an item for a fixed price on your site and then signs up to EBay, they are much more likely to buy that item after they sign up since it’s selling for the price “advertised”. And since EBay’s new lead system is based on quality (pay outs are $1-$50 per lead), I think that people’s lead quality should go up.

But will you get as many sales? I’m not sure. Your EPC should go up since more people who click will buy. But your overall sales may not go up since it’s likely less people will be clicking.

All-in-all I think the change will be good for affiliates. What do you guys think?

My phpBay Pro earnings for June and July

I’m a little behind on updating you guys on my phpBay Pro earnings. I’ve also been pretty about about posting tips. Things have been pretty busy. But i’m going to try and start posting again at least once a week. If anyone has any tips to submit or specific questions, feel free to post a comment or send me an email and I’ll Post them.

Back to my earnings…

The past two months have been great. My revenue has been going up each month. In June $457.99 from EPN and my Fender amps site made another $54 from Commission Junction. So my total June earnings were $511. Just about all that came from my used apple laptop site, and my Fender site. While my golf ball site is still my best looking phpBay site, it is the poorest performing site. My SEO rankings started to drop and the commissions weren’t great so I started to focus all my efforts on the two other sites.

July was even better. In July I made $518 from phpBay pro and my fender site made another $66 from CJ. So my total earnings from phpBay sites was $584.

Here is a screenshot of my payments from the last few months:

Here is a screenshot of the breakdown of my earnings by site over the past three months (not including August. “Default Campaign” is my fender site):

Note that a lot of that revenue from the Golf Ball site came when i was testing PPC. Most of that is not profit. But the other two sites are all from organic traffic.

August is off to a great start, too. I already earned $347 and the months is just half way through. I’ll keep you posten on how it turns out.

Also, if you didn’t get phpBay Pro yet, It’s time to buy, Wade sent me a 20% off phpBay coupon. So buy it already!

Coupon Code for 20% Discount on phpBay Pro

Still haven’t joined the phpBay Pro bandwagon? Well now’s the time. Wade (the developer behind phpBay Pro) just sent me an exclusive coupon code for a 20% discount on any phpBay Pro product.

You can’t find this phpBay coupon anywhere else and I don’t think it will stay valid for long. So if you’ve been thinking about buying the phpBay Pro wordpress plugin, do it now and save over $15.00 off the regular price.

Here’s how you get the 20% discount on phpBay Pro:

1. Click here to buy phpBay Pro.

2. Enter the 20% discount code at checkout. 856DC48875

3. Start your first site and make money like the rest of us!

Over the past 3 months I have made about $1500 from just 3 phpBay sites (see my earnings here). And most of my traffic is just to 2 sites. (I will post the last few months earnings screenshots in a few days). So stop putting it off and buy phpBay today while you can get $15 off. Then read this blog for tips on how to earn like me.

Make your phpBay auction titles look more professional

Don’t you hate it when your phpBay auction results have aLl sOrTs oF FuNnY CAPITILIZATIONS? It makes your site look very unprofessional.

Ebay sellers do all sorts of crazy stuff to get their auctions to stand out. And unfortunately, there auctions show up as-is on your phpBay sites. Until now.

Allan Lewis of Handy Hints for New Webmasters created a plugin that converts all your wacky phpBay auction results titles in normal, title case results.

The plugin is super easy to use. Get the phpBay title fixing plugin.

Thanks Allan!

phpBay version 3.0.5 released!

Today Wade released a new version of phpBay Pro for wordpress. The new version is 3.0.5. I just upgraded ad one of the cool new features is the “best match” sort option for your eBay results. This should help you get more relevant auction results on your phpBay sites.

If you are still on 3.0 and you missed the last few small updates, there are a few other minor updates. First, you no longer need iconotube. You can delete it from your root folder when you install 3.0.5.

Also, you no longer need to create a license file and upload it. You just need to enter your license key from your phpBay admin account.

Read about all the additions to phpBay on the phpBay forums:

Read about updates in 3.0.5
Read about updates in 3.0.4 
Read about updates in 3.0.3
Read about updates in 3.0.2
Read about updates in 3.0.1

How to organize posts and pages on your phpBay site.

I always get people asking me how I set up my phpbay sites to look like real websites and not blogs. One of the best ways to make you phpBay site look like a real website is to be smart how you organize your posts and pages.

How do you do that? First of all, make your home page display just one page or post. There are a few ways to set that up. You can create your homepage content with a page, or with a post.

Before we get into that, download the Flexi Pages Widget. That’s what I use to display my pages in my sidebar. Add it to your sidebar and edit the settings so that “List sub-pages only in parent and related pages in hierarchy.” Is checked off. This lets you hide the sub pages under each page until that page is clicked, then it expands and shows the sub pages. That’s what I used on Discount Golf Balls.

How to use a Page for you phpBay Site home page
If you want to make it with a page, here’s what you do (in wordpress 2.5+). First, create a page and for the title, use your headline you want on the front page.

Now go to Settings>Reading and then where it says “front page displays” select “a static page” and then from the drop down list pick the page name you just created (the headline of your homepage). …Read more »

Get more clicks by removing bids

Removing the bids from your phpBay sites is a simple way to get more clicks and earn more money. It’s an easy hack that anyone can do if they follow my step-by-step instructions.

But before I go into the details of what to change, I’ll take a moment to tell you why removing bids from phpBay sites will help you make more money with phpBay.

It’s really not rocket science. People will click your links when they see a product that is at an amazing price, a price they can’t get anywhere else. But if I’m on your phpBay site and I see an ipod for $20, but I also see 0 bids, I instantly realize it’s not an amazing deal, it’s just that the ipod has no bids on it, and the price will go up. So I’m less likely to click. But if I see an ipod for $20, and I don’t se anything about the number of bids, then I’m gonna click in a heartbeat because I think the ipod is selling for $20.

True, when people get to eBay they will realize that it’s not selling for $20 and that there are no bids, but at least we planted the eBay cookie. The goal with phpBay is to plant as many cookies as possible.

So lets take a look at how to modify your theme to stop the bids from displaying in phpBay auction results.

Step 1. Locate your template files. You want to edit the file called “template.ebay.results.html” for the regular auction layout and “template.column.results.html” for the column layout. The path to both files is “phpbay_plugin > wp-content > plugins > phpBay > templates”

Step 2. Save a copy of the files in another folder BEFORE you edit them.

Step 3. Open the files in an HTML editing software (or in notepad).

Step 4. Look for this line of code: 

<td width="60" align="right">%%bid_or_bin%%</td>

Step 5. Now you can delete that whole line. But I prefer to comment it out in case I want to turn it on later. To comment it out, replace that line of code with this line:

<--<td width="60" align="right">%%bid_or_bin%%</td>-->

Step 6. Save the file and upload it over the current file using an FTP software (I like Filezilla).

Step 7. There is no step seven. Your done! Go to your site to make sure it worked.

Hope that little hack helps you get more clicks on your phpBay Sites.

phpBay 3.0.2 Released!

Just saw that Wade released a new version of phpBay. The update includes compatibility with phpBay and PepperJam Network. Many people complained about a huge drop in commissions when they switched to EPN. I never noticed any issues and my comissions seemed to be on par with what they were before. But I will probably test it out with PepperJam just to compare.

The new version of phpBay fixes a few minor bugs that were in phpBay 3.0.1. Most notably, Wade fixed a bug with the dynamic CID feature introduced in version 3.0.1.

If you didn’t upgrade yet, head on over to the phpBay Store, log in, and download and install the new version.

Other ways to make money with your phpBay site

In addition to using just phpBay Pro on my phpBay sites, there are a few other ways I make money from my sites.

The first way is with Google Adsense, the second way is with product links from Commission Junctions advertisers.

The question is: are these methods write for your phpBay site?

They may be.

Let’s start with Adsense. Many people don’t want to put adsense on their phpBay site because they feel it takes away from their eBay sales. This is a valid concern.

Whether or not you should have adsense on your phpBay site depends on a few things. First, are you selling high priced items? If you’re selling high-priced items than it may not be worth it to put adsense on on your phpBay site. If you could easily make $10 a sale, it doesn’t make sense to send your visitor away for a $0.10 click . But if you sell lower priced items and an adsense click earns you close to the same amount as an ebay sale, it would be worth testing adsense on your phpBay site.

Second, is your site converting? You may be getting lots of visitors, but for some reason people just aren’t buying from you site. It may be time to test out some well-placed adsense units. Even if you sell high-priced items. …Read more »